Abstract
Drought stress is one of the major abiotic stresses affecting lint yield and fibre quality in cotton. With increase in population, degrading natural resources and frequent drought occurrences, development of high yielding, drought tolerant cotton cultivars is critical for sustainable cotton production across countries. Six Gossypium hirsutum genotypes identified for drought tolerance, wider adaptability and better fibre quality traits were characterized for various morpho-physiological and biochemical characters and their molecular basis was investigated under drought stress. Under drought conditions, genotypes revealed statistically significant differences for all the morpho-physiological and biochemical traits. The interaction (genotype × treatment) effects were highly significant for root length, excised leaf water loss and cell membrane thermostability indicating differential interaction of genotypes under control and stress conditions. Correlation studies revealed that under drought stress, relative water content had significant positive correlation with root length and root-to-shoot ratio while it had significant negative correlation with excised leaf water loss, epicuticular wax, proline, potassium and total soluble sugar content. Analysis of expression of fourteen drought stress related genes under water stress indicated that both ABA dependent and ABA independent mechanisms of drought tolerance might be operating differentially in the studied genotypes. IC325280 and LRA5166 exhibited ABA mediated expression of stress responsive genes and traits. Molecular basis of drought tolerance in IC357406, Suraj, IC259637 and CNH 28I genotypes could be attributed to ABA independent pathway. Based on physiological phenotyping, the genotypes IC325280 and IC357406 were identified to possess better root traits and LRA5166 was found to have enhanced cellular level tolerance. Variety Suraj exhibited good osmotic adjustment and better root traits to withstand water stress. The identified drought component trait(s) in specific genotypes would pave way for their pyramiding through marker assisted cotton breeding.
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This work was supported by the funds from Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) to Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR), Nagpur. A. M. Abdelmoghny gratefully acknowledge ‘Research Training Fellowship for Developing Country Scientists (RTF-DCS)’ provided by Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India through Centre for Science and Technology of the Non-Aligned and Other Developing Countries (NAM S&T Centre). Authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions in improving the manuscript.
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Abdelmoghny, A.M., Raghavendra, K.P., Sheeba, J.A. et al. Morpho-physiological and molecular characterization of drought tolerance traits in Gossypium hirsutum genotypes under drought stress. Physiol Mol Biol Plants 26, 2339–2353 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12298-020-00890-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12298-020-00890-3